Germany Generated 74 Percent Of Power Needs From Renewable Energy

[Mr Natural]

And they pay 3X what we do for power - I read that in my elec coop magazine we get monthly. They're seriously moving away from green energy because it's unaffordable.

SO, when you tout this as some sort of proof that it's great, you're misrepresenting the reality that they tried it and it's been a disaster.

Every new technology is unaffordable at first.

 

[eagle1462010]

And they pay 3X what we do for power - I read that in my elec coop magazine we get monthly. They're seriously moving away from green energy because it's unaffordable.

SO, when you tout this as some sort of proof that it's great, you're misrepresenting the reality that they tried it and it's been a disaster.

Every new technology is unaffordable at first.

The prices are coming down some since the last I checked, but are still not able to compete with fossil fuels in my area of concern.

I just got an average size to install those panels for my needs and I'd need 1600 square foot of space to install the system to produce my own power.

I also checked on the FHA power saver program. it is active until next year. If I installed the system and went FHA on it I'd get the 30% rebate on the system or to make it easier a rebate check for $7,500 at tax time. I didn't add in the tax costs, permits and fees to the estimate either. Which will raise my estimate by about $2,500 to the overall costs of installation.

That puts the initial costs at approximately $27,500.
With the Rebate of $7,500 at the end of the year.
Total cost of the system at 20k. According to the FHA site loan rates are currently at 5% to 7%.

 

[flacaltenn]

I just don't understand how you can be for limiting carbon emissions and anti-Nuclear. Kind of conflicts.

If they are stupid enough to believe that can replace all their nuclear with wind and solar, they are gonna literally kill thousands od people in the near future.. German technologists are not stupid, but theres a history of ending up with crazy and dangerous leadership...

You know, usually I would let this get by, but your passing reference to the Nazi times is just so fucking batshit crazy, I am gonna have to respond to this one.

Fact:

1.) Use of renewable energy has nothing to do with 1933-1945. Any attempt make a connection between the two is totally foolish. Renewable energy did not exist between 1933-1945.

2.) To say that moving to renewable energy is going to kill people is just plain old stupid. Where is your PROOF that this is going to happen? Do you have statistics about people who have been killed by solar panels and wind/water turbines? Really?

So, let me give you some inside information:

I live 10 kilometers from a wind farm that works perfectly. There are, I believe, 21 turbines in action there. It was created in agreement with farmers, who allow part of the land to be used for wind turbines, who also allow solar panels to be put on their buildings, and they still farm and their animals still graze. Even with the many grey skies that Germany has - the wind energy output here is immense.

I live 20 Kilometers from one of the larger solar farms in the world. The installation is right along the A3 Highway between Siegburg and Frankfurt and covers a huge amount of energy needs.

While American energy bills are going UP, German energy bills are going DOWN.

The cost for converting to Wind/Solar/Water is now at parity with the costs for maintaining a fossil fuel lifestyle in Germany, about 3 years AHEAD of the original calculations.

I just compared my per Kilowatt price with the price that my sister in Ohio pays and was shocked to see that I pay less per month that she does. Actually, considerable less.

The biggest controversy, the one that actually spurred the German government to do what it is doing, was the decision to completely shut down nuclear energy by 2023:

Liste der Kernreaktoren in Deutschland ? Wikipedia

Germany once had 110 reactors, it now has 14 still functioning. 5 of those were supposed to go offline in 2011, but a court case is being fought over them. The last nine are supposed to go offline by December, 2022 at the latest. There are also 8 research reactors still functioning, but not for creating energy to go into the energy-net.

Of course, in order to reduce energy from nuclear, Germany had to IMPORT energy from somewhere else until the solar/wind/water project is completed, and Germany made the mistake of importing lots of energy from nuclear reactors from the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia), reactors in terrible shape. By importing more and more energy from those reactors, not only was it totally hypocritical of Germany to do this, it was dangerous, for those reactors started pumping overtime in order to meet the extra energy needs of other countries like Germany. If there are any reactors in Europe that need to be shut down right now, as in, like yesterday, then it would be the reactors from those three small nations. When the German population found out about this in 2009, there was a large outcry. And now Germany is no longer importing from the Baltic States.

Call it what you want out of utter ignorance if that pleases you, but Germany is undoubtedly leading the way in the field of renewables: solar, wind, water. They are doing it less with water, because Germany is mostly landlocked and only a small part of the country has a coastline with the North Sea / Atlantic Ocean.

Not only that, when Germany does reach 80% of it's energy from renewables, it won't have to import at all. In fact, in the forseeable future, Germany will be EXPORTING a lot of energy from renewable energy sources. And we are not even talking about fusion - a subject for another day.

Germany has done this because it had to. Necessity is often the mother of invention, and it is definitely the case here. Germany has very few fossil fuel resources left - oil and coal. Most of those resources were used up in WWII. This is fact that most Americans do not know. In fact, the dearth of coal is what led to the Coal/Steel Pact between Germany and France in the early 1950s, just years after the most bitter war in our planet's history ended, even as feelings between those two nations were very, very hard. And that pact is what led to the Franco/Geman Friendship pact of 1963, just 18 years after the end of WWII.

The same lack of natural (fossil fuel) resources is what spurred Germany to move to renewables ahead of the rest of the world. As my ex-father-in-law has often said to me: "Germany's greatest export good is here" - and he would point to his brain, meaning that German know-how, German innovation, which is exported all over the world, fuels a lot of it's economy, which, as you will note, is doing better than the US economy.

Yes, it is true that at the onset, Solar and wind costs more money to put in place and also requires SOME fossil fuels to even build the components. But in the long run, those things last 1000 times longer, or more. Which means that they pay for themselves with time. That SHOULD be a Conservative battle cry, but once again, Conservatives around the world have totally dropped the ball over an issue that could easily be theirs.

So, I have presented cold, hard facts. Where are yours?

To even suggest that the use of renewables is going to kill people in the future is just plain batshit crazy. And then, for you to suggest that this is because the this is a problem because "but theres a history of ending up with crazy and dangerous leadership" is just so batshit crazy, I don't know even where to begin with you. Do Godwin much? How idiotic.

Next time, before you shoot your mouth off about a country I bet you have never even visited, why not ask someone who actually lives there?


[MENTION=30473]flacaltenn[/MENTION]
[MENTION=41527]Pogo[/MENTION]
[MENTION=42916]Derideo_Te[/MENTION] (it's not deceleration, but it's close!!)

Seems like you like want to ignore the piss-poor investments that Germany has made in wind-solar and ignore the performance charts that I posted and the economic analysis I posted just to pick nits about Nazis which I never mentioned. The entire OP is a fraud and a lie pretending to announce some important milestone of performance. When in fact, LOOKING AT THE DATA --- it's the ultimate in public deception..

1) I only referred to the consistently bad choices of leadership that Germans have and continue to make. This alliance with the Green Party is the one that is in play today. And I stand by the comparison. Money has been squandered and infrastructure decisions have been made on ideological platforms -- not engineering and facts.

2) The idea that wind/solar would EVER be a backbone source of generation and a REPLACEMENT for fossils and nuclear is fundamentally wrong and dangerous and WILL lead to getting people killed.. Wind and Solar are PEAKER technologies, not steady backbone generation and as such can NEVER be used to EXPAND capacity to demand. For every MWatt of these sources, there MUST BE parallel resources available. And that means that one or other sits idle and subsidized.

Germany's Green Energy Disaster: A Cautionary Tale For World Leaders - Forbes

Merkel’s energy plan called for the addition of 25,000 megawatts of sea-based wind turbine power by 2030. However through the first six months of 2012 only 45 megawatts had been added to Germany’s existing 200-megawatt supply, according to an industry analyst quoted by Reuters. And despite massive subsidies funded by a household energy surcharge (which currently comprises 14 percent of German power bills), major wind projects in the North Sea are being delayed or canceled due to skittish investors.

The basic problem? Wind farms are notoriously unreliable as a power source. Not only that, they take up vast amounts of space and kill tens of thousands of birds annually.

“Generating energy with wind involves extreme fluctuations because it depends on the weather and includes periods without any recognizable capacity for days, or suddenly occurring supply peaks that push the grid to its limits,” a 2012 report from Germany energy expert Dr. Guenter Keil notes. “There is a threat of power outages over large areas, mainly in wintertime when the demand is high and less (power) gets delivered from abroad.”

Because renewable power sources have been so unreliable, Germany has been forced to construct numerous new coal plants in an effort to replace the nuclear energy it has taken offline. In fact the country will build more coal-fired facilities this year than at any time in the past two decades – bringing an estimated 5,300 megawatts of new capacity online. Most of these facilities will burn lignite, too, which is strip-mined and emits nearly 30 percent more carbon dioxide than hard coal.

In other words Germany is dirtying the planet in the name of clean energy – and sticking its citizens with an ever-escalating tab so it can subsidize an energy source which will never generate sufficient power.

3) I'm not surprised that you sit amongst so many ill-conceived renewable projects. Show us the DAILY production charts for "your" windfarm.. If you can find them they will look no different than this --- which is one of the worlds best sited OFF-SHORE danish farms. And one of the FEW BIG wind projects that still post their embarrassing daily production.

You OVER-build THAT and tear down the nuclear plants and people WILL DIE in the wintertime just as the Forbes article suggests.

The jig is up and lying about the performance of this investment is all that is left..

 

[flacaltenn]

Oh, and I forgot to mention this quote from the OP:

What’s more, “in Germany you have the option of earning back your payments, and far more, by investing as little as $600 in renewable energy yourself,” Lovins writes. “Citizens, cooperatives, and communities own more than half of German renewable capacity, vs. two percent in the U.S.”

I, good capitalist that I am, am already investing. I own stock in renewables in Germany. Even the most Right-Wing political party in Germany, the FDP, is strongly behind renewables. That says something.

So the peoples money is squandered in bad energy investments and their bills have increased thru the roof and you are celebrating the fact that the Govt is encouraging them to INVEST MORE in the fraud? Good for you.. Here in the US, the collective market for wind looks like a dead cat bounce.. Have at it.. You and GoldiRocks can continue to announce the rare "good news" (or manufacture it) so that your investments can grow..

[MENTION=27364]polarbear[/MENTION] ought to tell you the tale of how far this crazed leadership will go to try and salvage their investments. Like the very green act of tearing up entire Alpine mountain sides to attempt hydro buffering and storage for wind and solar. Taking a 33% efficient power source and making it into a 15% efficient power source and destroying the environment in the name of saving it..

That's insane..

>>> Edit --- And why are you misrepresenting the FDP as being staunch supporters of this leap to oblivion? There is not a renewable ADVOCATE on the PLANET that would agree that FDP is a partner in this hare-brained scheme..

 

[flacaltenn]

I will also note that the German energy grid is much, much more advanced than that of the US, mostly because they completely renovated it (in about 5 waves) over the last 20 years.

In the US, the grid is set up for specific areas: for instance, there is a grid for the East Coast, but it has nothing to do with the Big Sky States, for example. And it has been a long time since the grid was updated.

This has one advantage: in the case of a massive blackout, like in the summer of 2005, only one part of the country is affected.

But the upside to the German grid is that energy from all sources is fed into the same net all at once. In Germany (and most all of the EU), the net is set up for 230 V and 50 Herz is the standard, alternating-current in a three phase distribution to most homes and businesses:

This is the more efficient way to store and transport electrical energy, which also means that the German electrical grid, when compared 1:1 with the US-American grid, is cheaper to operate, maintain and upgrade.

In the USA, the Grid is set up for 115-120 Volt, at 60 Herz, which also means alternating current, but some parts of the country still work with direct current. It's also usually a two phase system. This is why homes in the USA usually have special outlets for equipment that needs 240 volt (like air conditioners, some hair dryers, large appliances like washer and dryers, etc...)

So, if a wind turbine goes overtime in Baden-Württemberg on a day when the wind is hardly blowing in Nordrhrein Westfalen, because everything lands in the same "net", the prices stay lower and more stable than US Americans want to admit and I will remind again, TAX for energy is ALREADY in the kilowatt price. Same deal for solar farms and panels overall, same deal for underwater turbines. Energy net = Energy net = Energy net.

Likewise for Natural Gas and Water - the three pillars of modern energy. Most heating in German homes is with water, btw or electrical floorboard (under the floor) heat. You don't see heating and AC vents in most German homes as you see in US American homes.

NONE of this has any bearing on the efficacy of mindlessly adding tons of unreliable flaky power to the Generation side of the grid. I can show you German OVERALLS for daily wind and distribution of wind is insignificant to solving any part of the basic problem. IN FACT, the chart I posted on the OP pages ago is a NET German production chart..

Let's reproduce that here so you can continue to obfuscate and brag..

You cannot defend that kind of poor performance in light of the CRITICALLY BAD DECISIONS being made by Merkel and her Green Socialist buddies.

Interconnectivity of the grid is NOT a huge advantage. Not for a country the size of the US. In fact, TEXAS is on its own bigger than Germany and TOTALLY disconnected from the other national grid ties. And THEIR wind performance over the WHOLE of TEXAS ain't no better or worse than the chart above. You cannot continue to expand this flaky unreliable power without even HIGHER subsidies for the backbone producers that are forced to idle or dump power while the wind blows. And there are economic reasons why you cannot send power over long distances. DC transmission in this country is ONLY used for a limited number of long haul lines -- hardly ever for local distribution. And contrary to your assertions, STORAGE is not a significant feature of ANY national grid. The power generators need to be responsive and reliable to the loads. And wind/solar cannot be relied on, cannot be scheduled, and can not even be CONTRACTED FOR days ahead..

Here's one of your solar "investments" paying for itself last winter. Probably somewhere in Bavaria..

 

[eagle1462010]

FYI............and that's all.....

Gov't programs to loan money on systems with the terms and conditions and even the contact numbers.

http://solarleasedisadvantages.com/solarfinancing.pdf

 

[eagle1462010]

Found at this amusing site..........about why not to lease your system if you choose to do so.

LOL

 

[flacaltenn]

And they pay 3X what we do for power - I read that in my elec coop magazine we get monthly. They're seriously moving away from green energy because it's unaffordable.

SO, when you tout this as some sort of proof that it's great, you're misrepresenting the reality that they tried it and it's been a disaster.

Every new technology is unaffordable at first.

Solar and wind are ancient as modern technologies go.. I wouldn't be expecting miracles to come flying out of a unicorn's ass anytime soon.. BOTH are commodity products where costs have been wrung out by DOZENS of companies..

 

[Katzndogz]

Germany gets 74% of their power from renewable energy. Germany refused to go along with US sanctions against Russia because they get the majority of their energy needs from Russian oil.

Both of these circumstances cannot be true.

 

[ScienceRocks]

I hope Germany builds tons of coal plants and stops with decommising nuclear.

 

[Pogo]

I hope Germany builds tons of coal plants and stops with decommising nuclear.

Why?

 

[Statistikhengst]

Germany gets 74% of their power from renewable energy. Germany refused to go along with US sanctions against Russia because they get the majority of their energy needs from Russian oil.

Both of these circumstances cannot be true.

That's because your second sentence is a lie.

 

[Statistikhengst]

I hope Germany builds tons of coal plants and stops with decommising nuclear.

Wouldn't do any good. There is hardly any coal of value to be mined any more in Germany.

 

[Statistikhengst]

If they are stupid enough to believe that can replace all their nuclear with wind and solar, they are gonna literally kill thousands od people in the near future.. German technologists are not stupid, but theres a history of ending up with crazy and dangerous leadership...

You know, usually I would let this get by, but your passing reference to the Nazi times is just so fucking batshit crazy, I am gonna have to respond to this one.

Fact:

1.) Use of renewable energy has nothing to do with 1933-1945. Any attempt make a connection between the two is totally foolish. Renewable energy did not exist between 1933-1945.

2.) To say that moving to renewable energy is going to kill people is just plain old stupid. Where is your PROOF that this is going to happen? Do you have statistics about people who have been killed by solar panels and wind/water turbines? Really?

So, let me give you some inside information:

I live 10 kilometers from a wind farm that works perfectly. There are, I believe, 21 turbines in action there. It was created in agreement with farmers, who allow part of the land to be used for wind turbines, who also allow solar panels to be put on their buildings, and they still farm and their animals still graze. Even with the many grey skies that Germany has - the wind energy output here is immense.

I live 20 Kilometers from one of the larger solar farms in the world. The installation is right along the A3 Highway between Siegburg and Frankfurt and covers a huge amount of energy needs.

While American energy bills are going UP, German energy bills are going DOWN.

The cost for converting to Wind/Solar/Water is now at parity with the costs for maintaining a fossil fuel lifestyle in Germany, about 3 years AHEAD of the original calculations.

I just compared my per Kilowatt price with the price that my sister in Ohio pays and was shocked to see that I pay less per month that she does. Actually, considerable less.

The biggest controversy, the one that actually spurred the German government to do what it is doing, was the decision to completely shut down nuclear energy by 2023:

Liste der Kernreaktoren in Deutschland ? Wikipedia

Germany once had 110 reactors, it now has 14 still functioning. 5 of those were supposed to go offline in 2011, but a court case is being fought over them. The last nine are supposed to go offline by December, 2022 at the latest. There are also 8 research reactors still functioning, but not for creating energy to go into the energy-net.

Of course, in order to reduce energy from nuclear, Germany had to IMPORT energy from somewhere else until the solar/wind/water project is completed, and Germany made the mistake of importing lots of energy from nuclear reactors from the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia), reactors in terrible shape. By importing more and more energy from those reactors, not only was it totally hypocritical of Germany to do this, it was dangerous, for those reactors started pumping overtime in order to meet the extra energy needs of other countries like Germany. If there are any reactors in Europe that need to be shut down right now, as in, like yesterday, then it would be the reactors from those three small nations. When the German population found out about this in 2009, there was a large outcry. And now Germany is no longer importing from the Baltic States.

Call it what you want out of utter ignorance if that pleases you, but Germany is undoubtedly leading the way in the field of renewables: solar, wind, water. They are doing it less with water, because Germany is mostly landlocked and only a small part of the country has a coastline with the North Sea / Atlantic Ocean.

Not only that, when Germany does reach 80% of it's energy from renewables, it won't have to import at all. In fact, in the forseeable future, Germany will be EXPORTING a lot of energy from renewable energy sources. And we are not even talking about fusion - a subject for another day.

Germany has done this because it had to. Necessity is often the mother of invention, and it is definitely the case here. Germany has very few fossil fuel resources left - oil and coal. Most of those resources were used up in WWII. This is fact that most Americans do not know. In fact, the dearth of coal is what led to the Coal/Steel Pact between Germany and France in the early 1950s, just years after the most bitter war in our planet's history ended, even as feelings between those two nations were very, very hard. And that pact is what led to the Franco/Geman Friendship pact of 1963, just 18 years after the end of WWII.

The same lack of natural (fossil fuel) resources is what spurred Germany to move to renewables ahead of the rest of the world. As my ex-father-in-law has often said to me: "Germany's greatest export good is here" - and he would point to his brain, meaning that German know-how, German innovation, which is exported all over the world, fuels a lot of it's economy, which, as you will note, is doing better than the US economy.

Yes, it is true that at the onset, Solar and wind costs more money to put in place and also requires SOME fossil fuels to even build the components. But in the long run, those things last 1000 times longer, or more. Which means that they pay for themselves with time. That SHOULD be a Conservative battle cry, but once again, Conservatives around the world have totally dropped the ball over an issue that could easily be theirs.

So, I have presented cold, hard facts. Where are yours?

To even suggest that the use of renewables is going to kill people in the future is just plain batshit crazy. And then, for you to suggest that this is because the this is a problem because "but theres a history of ending up with crazy and dangerous leadership" is just so batshit crazy, I don't know even where to begin with you. Do Godwin much? How idiotic.

Next time, before you shoot your mouth off about a country I bet you have never even visited, why not ask someone who actually lives there?


[MENTION=30473]flacaltenn[/MENTION]
[MENTION=41527]Pogo[/MENTION]
[MENTION=42916]Derideo_Te[/MENTION] (it's not deceleration, but it's close!!)

Seems like you like want to ignore the piss-poor investments that Germany has made in wind-solar and ignore the performance charts that I posted and the economic analysis I posted just to pick nits about Nazis which I never mentioned. The entire OP is a fraud and a lie pretending to announce some important milestone of performance. When in fact, LOOKING AT THE DATA --- it's the ultimate in public deception..

1) I only referred to the consistently bad choices of leadership that Germans have and continue to make. This alliance with the Green Party is the one that is in play today. And I stand by the comparison. Money has been squandered and infrastructure decisions have been made on ideological platforms -- not engineering and facts.

2) The idea that wind/solar would EVER be a backbone source of generation and a REPLACEMENT for fossils and nuclear is fundamentally wrong and dangerous and WILL lead to getting people killed.. Wind and Solar are PEAKER technologies, not steady backbone generation and as such can NEVER be used to EXPAND capacity to demand. For every MWatt of these sources, there MUST BE parallel resources available. And that means that one or other sits idle and subsidized.

Germany's Green Energy Disaster: A Cautionary Tale For World Leaders - Forbes

Merkel’s energy plan called for the addition of 25,000 megawatts of sea-based wind turbine power by 2030. However through the first six months of 2012 only 45 megawatts had been added to Germany’s existing 200-megawatt supply, according to an industry analyst quoted by Reuters. And despite massive subsidies funded by a household energy surcharge (which currently comprises 14 percent of German power bills), major wind projects in the North Sea are being delayed or canceled due to skittish investors.

The basic problem? Wind farms are notoriously unreliable as a power source. Not only that, they take up vast amounts of space and kill tens of thousands of birds annually.

“Generating energy with wind involves extreme fluctuations because it depends on the weather and includes periods without any recognizable capacity for days, or suddenly occurring supply peaks that push the grid to its limits,” a 2012 report from Germany energy expert Dr. Guenter Keil notes. “There is a threat of power outages over large areas, mainly in wintertime when the demand is high and less (power) gets delivered from abroad.”

Because renewable power sources have been so unreliable, Germany has been forced to construct numerous new coal plants in an effort to replace the nuclear energy it has taken offline. In fact the country will build more coal-fired facilities this year than at any time in the past two decades – bringing an estimated 5,300 megawatts of new capacity online. Most of these facilities will burn lignite, too, which is strip-mined and emits nearly 30 percent more carbon dioxide than hard coal.

In other words Germany is dirtying the planet in the name of clean energy – and sticking its citizens with an ever-escalating tab so it can subsidize an energy source which will never generate sufficient power.

3) I'm not surprised that you sit amongst so many ill-conceived renewable projects. Show us the DAILY production charts for "your" windfarm.. If you can find them they will look no different than this --- which is one of the worlds best sited OFF-SHORE danish farms. And one of the FEW BIG wind projects that still post their embarrassing daily production.

You OVER-build THAT and tear down the nuclear plants and people WILL DIE in the wintertime just as the Forbes article suggests.

The jig is up and lying about the performance of this investment is all that is left..

Gee, I just hate to call anyone out for lying, but you cannot have it both ways.

You wrote:

German technologists are not stupid, but theres a history of ending up with crazy and dangerous leadership...

Since the only, and I mean, only truly dangerous history of leadership in Germany was indeed from 1933-1945, I will not let you get away with this kind of dishonesty.

Secondly, you provide stats from one location for one day and somehow that is supposed to impress me?

The daily stats are not as important as the yearly production stats. For wind, on a windy day, the output will be enormous. On a day where there is no wind, the output will be less. The average is what counts, especially since the energy is being fed all into the same net all the time. This is exactly the same principle that investors in the stock market use for diversifying their respective portfolios.

So, as to coal: Germany is starting to experiment with extracting a lesser quality of coal. The method is being hotly discussed here, most do not want it. But the number of mines (most of which are of course in the Ruhr Valley) are a drop in the bucket compared to the national energy grid.

I will come back and bring you all the facts, not just the few assorted things you have decided to cherry pick.

Once again, shame on you for referring to the Nazi-era. Don't even try to lie again and say it wasn't so. It is quite obvious for anyone with eyes that can see.


One more thing: Germans do NOT want nuclear. They have already made their decision and are quite firm about it. Funny how you, as a supposedly freedom-loving person, want to spit on the wishes of other people. And cut the crap about this is going to cause people to die in the winter. What unbelievable horseshit.

This is, of course, not going to happen, and after a number of years, I plan to confront you about this. Right here, on this thread.

 

[Decus]

The latest revision of Germany's energy policy was to slow the growth of renewable energy in order to stabilize German energy prices. The EU has said that many German industries have been exempted from having to pay the surcharges related to renewable energy and that these exemptions violated EU rules.

The heart of the debate revolves around energy prices and German competitiveness - meaning jobs and longer term economic well-being:

"Key German industries have repeatedly expressed concern that the rapid and costly expansion of renewables could undermine the strength of country’s industrial base, ultimately putting 800,000 jobs at risk."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/b...y-moves-forward-on-renewable-energy-plan.html

More and more Germans don't like where this is headed.

 

[ScienceRocks]

The latest revision of Germany's energy policy was to slow the growth of renewable energy in order to stabilize German energy prices. The EU has said that many German industries have been exempted from having to pay the surcharges related to renewable energy and that these exemptions violated EU rules.

The heart of the debate revolves around energy prices and German competitiveness - meaning jobs and longer term economic well-being:

"Key German industries have repeatedly expressed concern that the rapid and costly expansion of renewables could undermine the strength of country’s industrial base, ultimately putting 800,000 jobs at risk."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/b...y-moves-forward-on-renewable-energy-plan.html

More and more Germans don't like where this is headed.

They need to consider not only stopping the decommising of nuclear but building more.

 

[flacaltenn]

Germany gets 74% of their power from renewable energy. Germany refused to go along with US sanctions against Russia because they get the majority of their energy needs from Russian oil.

Both of these circumstances cannot be true.

That's because your second sentence is a lie.

Cerrtainly -- BOTH sentences are lies..
The installed of base of wind/solar is not sufficient to power 74% of Germany as a design rule ever...

 

[flacaltenn]

Gee, I just hate to call anyone out for lying, but you cannot have it both ways.

You wrote:

German technologists are not stupid, but theres a history of ending up with crazy and dangerous leadership...

Since the only, and I mean, only truly dangerous history of leadership in Germany was indeed from 1933-1945, I will not let you get away with this kind of dishonesty.

Secondly, you provide stats from one location for one day and somehow that is supposed to impress me?

The daily stats are not as important as the yearly production stats. For wind, on a windy day, the output will be enormous. On a day where there is no wind, the output will be less. The average is what counts, especially since the energy is being fed all into the same net all the time. This is exactly the same principle that investors in the stock market use for diversifying their respective portfolios.

So, as to coal: Germany is starting to experiment with extracting a lesser quality of coal. The method is being hotly discussed here, most do not want it. But the number of mines (most of which are of course in the Ruhr Valley) are a drop in the bucket compared to the national energy grid.

I will come back and bring you all the facts, not just the few assorted things you have decided to cherry pick.

Once again, shame on you for referring to the Nazi-era. Don't even try to lie again and say it wasn't so. It is quite obvious for anyone with eyes that can see.


One more thing: Germans do NOT want nuclear. They have already made their decision and are quite firm about it. Funny how you, as a supposedly freedom-loving person, want to spit on the wishes of other people. And cut the crap about this is going to cause people to die in the winter. What unbelievable horseshit.

This is, of course, not going to happen, and after a number of years, I plan to confront you about this. Right here, on this thread.

Crazy and dangerous would describe both the pre-Nazi leadership in Germany that led to economic conditions and Nazi rise and the 1/2 of Germany under Socialist rule post war.
Don't know how you can fixate on the Nazis when none were mentioned.

As to the flaky unreliable nature of wind power, I have OFTEN posted daily production numbers from MiddelGrunden and others. You are free to check them yourself. What I posted is TYPICAL performance. Even the graph that started this whole thread will illustrate that wind is here for for a couple hours and GONE tomorrow. That's not even debateable.

To disprove that -- all you have to do is find daily numbers for any wind farm or regional system that provide RELIABLE week after week performance. The average YEARLY production of a wind turbine is about 32% of the RATED amount. And that is generous. Yearly production DOES NOT MATTER. NO storage means that generation is a minute to minute grid balancing task. And the BACKBONE fossil, nuclear, hydro resources HAVE to be there to provide FULL capacity plus a safety margin. Germany last winter allowed those safety margins to become very dangerously low. Thus -- solar and wind are NOT alternatives to anything. They are merely opportunistic supplements. And if you put too much of that crap on the grid, you flirt with disaster in terms of both energy markets and performance. You cannot create a market in wind. Because you can't write a contract to deliver 1GWatt of wind next Tuesday afternoon. You also destroy the financial incentive for folks to build CONVENTIONAL plants if you legislate that wind goes on the grid whenever available. Because no investors want to build plants that are constantly cycling up and down with the additional wear and tear -- or sitting idle with full staff and fuel reserves.

Yearly statistics don't mean piss if wind is not available next Wednesday and Friday and half available on Monday and Saturday in 20 minute intervals.

Trying to do ANYTHING towards a goal of CO2 reduction without nuclear is insane. Those are goals in engineering conflict. So the people of Germany are welcome to believe in hype (like this OP) and fairy tales as much as they want. But it's obvious that they are MORE FRIGHTENED by nuclear technology than they are by Global Warming. Which also speaks volumes about their commitments and energy plans..

 

[flacaltenn]

A random check on MiddelGrunden last December ----

http://www.usmessageboard.com/energy/329964-lets-peek-in-on-wind-production.html#post8315848

 

[whitehall]

It's amazing how the left spins this green junk science. The fact of the matter is that Germany's ten year experiment with renewable energy is an abject failure. According to Spiegal the CO2 emissions have increased, electric prices have skyrocketed and the green bubble has burst and cost the jobs of thousands of Germans. The news is so bad that Australia is considering dumping the junk science.